Tuesday, February 10, 2015

More money down the drain

Here we go. Having been warned by Treasury that their crony deal with their donors Sky City was risky and exposed us to the prospect of having to fork over more money to these corrupt Australian sociopaths, John Key is set to do exactly that:

Auckland's planned SkyCity convention centre risked being "an eyesore" unless the Government agrees to stump up more cash, Prime Minister John Key suggested today.

And he has again refused to rule out taxpayer cash for the project, which was originally touted as free to New Zealand.

So, Key's "great deal" for New Zealand is now that we fork over $130 million plus gambling concessions to subsidise a private company to suck even more money out of the economy. Or else a hypothetical building won't look as flash as Sky has said it will. So much for the belief that a government of businessmen means better deals...

But the really revolting thing here is that Sky City can easily afford to pay for this itself. They made a profit of $123 million last year. Financing the extra costs of their gold-plated convention centre design would eat only 10% of that. But apparently the concept of shareholders forgoing profits to invest in their own company is verboten to them and to their cronies in cabinet - so instead they need the taxpayer to pay it up front. We're being scammed here, with the active collusion of our own government, and Sky's foreign shareholders are laughing all the way to the bank.